


if you sleep always like this (for years or for hours)

by clytemnestras



Series: fem february 2018 [1]
Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Sleeping Beauty - All Media Types, Snow White - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 04:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13605525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: we are asleep until we love





	if you sleep always like this (for years or for hours)

She was awoken with a kiss. This is how they tell her story. A cursed girl, sleeping fitfully for a hundred years and only awoken by true love’s kiss.

 

They invent love the way they invent the misery of a hundred year stillness, a hundred years of quiet rest. 

 

When Briar holds her head up beneath her weighty crown, a boy (not a man, nothing even close) resting comfortably on the throne behind her, she remembers her time in dreaming and opens her eyes.

 

*

 

It is winter and her skin reflects the distant sunlight the way the frozen ground does. They feel identical to her. Snow should feel at home in the cold, but it leaves her insides feeling like the aftermath of a blizzard. Empty. Withered. Dead, again.

 

At least in the forest she is free to wander, to feel the wildness that used to terrify her. She belongs to that now. A queen of a country, a queen of the savage lands.

 

The news had arrived in their kingdom that morning, the sleeping princess awoken by a passing prince, his mouth breathing the life back into hers. Snow knows the story like the path of blue wrist veins.

 

She sends a message to the other kingdom in a satchel wrapped around the throat of a white-furred doe.

 

_ Do you also feel as though you are still sleeping? _

 

*

 

Briar has all the mirrors in the castle covered over, as if in mourning. And she is mourning. She cannot bear to see herself as she is, her once earthy skin dull as chalk, lips a thin chapped line from years without moistness, eyes hollow rings maring her youthful face. Her reflection is a ghost of the old princess, the pride and joy of the kingdom. The woman she is now, a century old and still deathly tired has no business being in the same old face.

 

When she is in the garden, the white doe lays its head in her lap and sleeps to the rhythms of her breaths as she strokes it's gentle head.

 

The note in the satchel makes her feel bold, makes the hairs on her arm erect again, as they haven't in a hundred years. It sends a yearning quiver through to her aching bones. She writes below the Queen’s looping script in the same scrawl she uses to note down her dreams at night, with the same chicken scratch pen she uses to spill her innards in ink.

 

_ Oh, I fear I won't ever truly wake. _

 

_ * _

 

Snow finds herself most often in the wildlife, speaking to the trees and the birds and watching as slowly they succumb to her influence, a branch warped in her direction, a bird who sings to the tune she whistles. She has always had an affinity with nature, and with the abyss pacing inside her now things have only grown stronger. 

 

The squirrels wrap around her throat like a fur scarf when she sits under the tree, drifting on her own thoughts, the memories of winters passed when the unsleeping princess unfurls in her mind. Snow was only gone for a season but Briar fell away for a hundred years. If winter has become one with Snow, she cannot imagine how cold Briar must feel. 

 

She hums a new tune and sends a bird to carry the song all the way to the princess. She makes her way home (to her husband, to her king), on the back of a tawny stag and as she passes by every subject bows in awe.

 

*

 

Briar leaves in the dead of night, for it is where dreams like her belong. The wide yellow moon above is singing the same song as the migrant skylarks that had come to her windowsill, tapping impatiently against the fragile glass.

 

The song is in an ancient language, one her bones have learned to interpret, and it directs her across the wilderness.

 

She steals her father's horse, the speckled grey mare she has tended to since it was a foal. Another casualty of her stupidity, her frailty, of her desire to put all the drama and worry and destiny to rest.

 

No one can remember sleeping but her.

 

(And another. The ghost-white queen. The day-dreamer, sleep-walker.)

 

They traverse the jewel green forest until the even the moon grows tired, one thousand fallen twigs splitting beneath her horse’s feet. 

 

In a clearing among the skeletons of fallen leaves and persevering lavender the song stops dead and the mare slows her tracks.

 

“I could not be sure you would come.” The voice comes from the darkness and as Briar turns a pale light unfurls from the cover of trees.

 

“How could I not?” She climbs down from the horse slowly and reaches a hand out toward the Queen. “You know me. You know far better than my husband, yet we have never so much as touched.”

 

The Queen smiles, and her mouth is the same colour as winter berries as they bleed between teeth. She takes Briar’s hand and neither shiver at the cold. “I have learned that the touch is not what matters. It's the story, transferred like breaths from one mouth to another.”

 

“Snow,” Briar says, not sure where the thought is headed.

 

Snow touches Briar's wrist, then her throat, then her cheek. “Once I heard of you I could not stop dreaming. I know I could not rest again until we both had met. It is after this I do not know what to do with.”

 

“It is nice,” Briar whispers, “to be around someone who remembers what it is like to still be sleeping. I'm sick of being told true love’s kiss had awoken me.”

 

Snow smiles again, an expression that darkens her bright face. “All this business with kissing. It should not hold such mystery. We should simply kiss who we wish to kiss without feeling all the weight of prophecy on our shoulders.”

 

Briar blinks slowly and tips her forehead against Snow’s. “We should simply kiss…” She whispers, her lips just brushing against Snow's until they connect, and the two sigh together, mouth melting against mouth as they become entangled.

 

*

 

Snow awakens with the Princess's face curled up between her breast and throat.

 

She is still asleep, a small smile on her pretty mouth. Snow knows that this means she is dreamless, finally in the restful black.

 

She weaves her fingers through the wild hair, knotting sprigs of heather and lavender flowers into the strands. A wild crown, for another wild creature belonging to the earth.

 

*

 

They tell the story like this: A cursed girl, sleeping fitfully for a hundred years and only awoken by true love’s kiss. This is what matters, what they remember.

 

Briar knows the truth, the lingering daysleep only banished by delicate regal fingers, but only the knobs of the White Queen's spine care to listen. 

 

She kisses each one, and her knees dig deep into the fresh spring grass. 

 

Spring, and the world is awake, life renewed once more.

**Author's Note:**

> pandering time: if you liked this fic check out my [payhip](https://payhip.com/celestiologies) for more writing or consider buying me a coffee [here](ko-fi.com/lucyhannahryan)
> 
> or just add me on tumblr [@bohemicns](www.bohemicns.tumblr.com)and chat. that too.


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